Day 286 - A Worried Man's Blues

A Sermon given to First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, Tennessee, Sept 22, 2013 and at St. Matthew's Shelter, Set. 23, 2013

OT Reading: Amos 8:4-12

NT Reading: Luke 16:1-13

We know when Jesus tells a parable there is a lesson in it. This one, however, has confounded theologians and ministers since it was first told, particularly verse 9, “... use wicked wealth to make friends for yourselves that they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” How do you gain a positive lesson from the actions of a dishonest person? Some very famous pastors have said there is nothing of value in this parable and others have struggled to re-interpret it to a more palatable and comfortable message. Some people even decide the dishonest manager get his job back making the story one of reward for working hard. I conclude if the manager got his job back, the parable would say so and it doesn’t. That makes my job harder. I first thought about skipping the whole lesson and talking about the Amos passage but decided we ought to walk through and try to get to the message Jesus saw in this parable.

I’m calling this sermon “A Worried Man” for two reasons. You may know the song, “It takes a Worried Man To Sing A Worried Song." "I’m worried now but I won’t be worried long." The first reason is because the dishonest manager was a worried man when the master called him in and said to give him an accounting of his business. There is another reason ands I’ll get to that one later. I’ll give you a hint, the previous parables by Jesus as he walked toward Jerusalem were spoken to the crowds or the scribes and Pharisees. This one is spoken to the disciples.

Back in the time this parable was told the ancient near east was a farming society.  Like farming today, it was dominated by a few folks who owned most of the land. Everybody else either rented land and gave the owner a cut of the proceeds or worked for the landowner and probably took a small share to feed the family. Basically the landowners lived off the people and had little regard for their situation. The landowners were the big people in the temple just like in the farming business. This had been going on since before Assyria invaded Israel and all the prophets took the landowners to task for it. Our reading in Amos today is a good example, but you can read Hosea, (It is not a pretty message), Isaiah or Jeremiah for some examples.

A landowner, the master, didn’t particularly want to get his hands dirty in cultivating and selling the yield of the land. Either he had people working the land, for example, growing olives and grain or making wine from the grapes for him, or he rented the land out to farmers.  The yield from the land, olives and grain and so forth, were sold to third parties and the landowner got his share that was most of the yield. It came in the form of either a portion of the crop or the proceeds from its sale according to whatever contract was written between the manager and the land user.

Managers made the business easier. The manager dealt with the nitty-gritty part of the business instead of the master.  There was nothing to stop the manager from adding his own fee to the transactions, or even taking a cut of the yield as long as the landowner got his income. It was often expected. The landowner may even not want to know exactly what the contracts say for good reasons. If he was charging interest to the farmer he was violating the Jewish Law. With the manager in charge, the landowner could plausibly say he did not know interest is being charged. In political circles today we call that unsavory practice “plausible deniability.”

Someone has come to the master and accused his manager of financial mismanagement. We don’t know what the manager did but we can assume that the manager is not a victim of malicious rumors. The master told the manager his job was done, and when he asks for an accounting for someone else’s use he is signaling to the manager the bad news that he has already begun making the arrangements for a change. Unfortunately for the manager, he has no trade skills, and probably no physical strength so he will not do well in the fields. All he has is the skill to “drive a desk” and a lot of pride, so his future is not good. Fortunately for the manager drawing up an account of his work takes some time. That gives him a little breathing room to think up a scheme, something his job prepared him to do very well.

This is a big deal in the social circle of the manager and his master. There is a level of trust and honor involved in this situation for both master and manager. The master loses face before his landowner friends if he admits his manager cheated him. The manager will lose face before his clients and associates if he loses his job. This saving face is a big deal as we remember from the fight over the best seat at the meal with the Pharisees.

The manager devises a creative solution that ingratiates him to the farmers. He goes to all the master’s clients and negotiates large discounts in their contract. This discount is a gift or benefit to the client and in this time the person receiving g the gift is obligated or indebted to the person who gives the benefit.

Jesus gives us two examples and they show we are not talking serious business by the amounts involved.  In one case he cuts the payment of 100 jugs of olive oil to the landowner by half, and in another case, the amount of grain by 20%. A hundred jugs of olive oil are about 900 gallons. We aren’t sure how much grain is involved but it appears it is perhaps as much as a 1,000 bushels. These big discounts, 450 gallons of olive oil, and 200 bushels of grain represent substantial business income.

Even though the contracts are re-written, the master knows the manager has pulled the wool over his eyes, but what can he say? Maybe the yield of olive oil was 50% less than normal, or the grain harvest 20% less than usual. Maybe the farmers were particularly sloppy that year, or left more in the field for the poor and aliens living among them than the Law said is the minimum. Probably the only thing in writing was the overall percentages of the harvested yield due the landlord.

It is even more complicated. The manager did not keep the money for the debts he forgave, he let the farmers keep it. The contract probably did not spell out exactly how much was harvested.

Even if he did know how much he discounted he can’t get it from the manager. And not knowing keeps him from going after the farmers. The manager has put the excess profit and the goods out of reach of the landowner.  If the master makes a public demand of repayment from the manager or clients, it makes him look bad in two ways that cause him to lose face. He showed poor judgment in selecting his manager, and he didn’t keep track of the manager’s activity.  Her really does not have much recourse against the manager, he was already going to fire the manager for mismanagement.

The master’s only recourse is to admire the shrewd skill of his dishonest manager who feathered his bed by obligating his clients with a good deal.  The obligation of a good gift is a very ingrained custom. It cannot be easily ignored or forgotten. The only face-saving option is to let the third parties think the master approved the unexpected windfall, privately recognize a shrewd fellow cost him some profit, and find another manager.

The manager on the other hand has in reach the good will the farmers who owe him for the blessing.  they are obliged to treat the manager with high honor.

If our story ended right here with the master praising the shrewd actions of the dishonest steward we would have a secular morality play. The dishonest manager in the world of high finance used his cleverness to recover from a lost situation of great value to him. The master still got a return, not as big as it could have been; but his coffers are full and he is done with his dishonest manager who feathered his nest quite well for the consequences of his actions. The moral might be, “All’s swell that ends well, or never panic and stop thinking in a crisis.”

Most business people have encountered this kind of cunning where some manager, or client has gotten rich at the expense of the boss in a way can’t be easily remedied.  I actually experienced a similar situation once when I was remodeling my home in Chattanooga. I hired a brick mason to lay a concrete block foundation wall for my new garage. I let him order the block from the building supply house and the order came in two loads, first a single pallet of blocks and then all the rest. When the bill came I saw by my records there was a flat too many charged to me and we realized the mason had arranged delivery of an extra pallet perhaps in cahoots with the driver and used it on another job, pocketing the cost of the blocks from the contractor of the second job and disappeared. The supply house corrected my bill but was out the price of the pallet of blocks, there was no way to prove the blocks at the other job were the ones used. It cost me a little more, I had to hire a good mason instead this fellow.

But Jesus is not done with his parable. He continues on, “For the sons of this age are more shrewd among their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell(order) you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” This really makes this parable almost impossible to understand without really thinking.

Most people who think they are penitent and religious likely do not think being “shrewd” or “clever” is a positive thing. Jesus must mean something really more significant for us than that.

There is no doubt money and material possessions are part of this parable, and there is no doubt from previous parables what Jesus has to say about the lure of status, wealth, and materialism, so maybe” dishonest wealth” is another overstatement referring to our material wealth. If we have a lot of money by earnings and savings, it probably came by being a good businessperson. Being a good businessperson requires knowing and walking near the boundaries of propriety, and being a hard bargainer and hanging onto money rather than spending it, so the money may not be as clean as we want it to be.  (By the way, we can all count our blessings and define what “a lot of money” is for ourselves.) 

So who are these friends that Jesus says are going to welcome us into eternal homes if we use our dishonest wealth well? It must mean we are to use our material resources for the glory of God. Who else can offer an eternal home, who else, as the hymn goes, is a true friend but Jesus?

Maybe the problem is that we take the statement (loveof) money is the root of all evil and make the leap that all money is evil because we have so many examples of greed and suffering in the face of wealth.

Jesus does not really condemn wealth in a clear-cut way. He did tell the disciples to go out on their own with only the clothes on their back and preach as a way to find receptive minds. It is written that money is the source of all evil. However, when I get to Luke 19 in about a month we will find a surprise twist. Jesus calls the tax collector, Zacchaeus to service and praises him; not for giving all his wealth away, but for giving half of it away. I’ll not spoil that passage by telling it all now but we are using this sermon as a prologue to it, so remember it.

Luke, and Paul, say the present material world, is fading away and the Kingdom of God is breaking in.  Paul says in Romans 8:22, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now. This means that though we long for the completion of the Kingdom of God, we are still walking in this old world that is full of wealth and possessions. That is what this parable is about, using the wealth and material possessions of this present world.

Our challenge is do we use creatively whatever wealth and possessions we have for the glory of God, or for our selves. (Remember, YOU define your wealth.) Using it for the glory brings us to closer to the Lord, worrying about hanging onto our wealth prepares us for despair because soon the material wealth will be gone. You can’t take it with you. The words in Greek are an imperative, “you do this.” Jesus orders us to use our cleverness with wealth to support God’s work on earth, not like dishonest people who use it to pad their earthly station.

We can be thankful for the last three verses that solve much of the confusion in this weird parable. Jesus asks us, “If you have even only a little wealth in the form of a modest lifestyle and you cannot manage even those modest gifts to glorify God, how can the Lord expect you to manage great gift of salvation he desires to give you? If you can’t faithfully manage your own wealth, why would anyone trust you with their superior wealth?

The closing verse (13) is a quote that we all remember. The issue here is focus. “No person can serve two masters, the material world and the kingdom of God, you will come to hate one and serve the other.” This is the choice and temptation of our blessings. This is what the quote reads, “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

Even though this old world is passing away as the kingdom of God enters, we do live in it tasked with doing justice with our wit and what we have in this old material world. The question before the house is, “Shall we be faithful stewards striving with our minds to find ways use our blessings to magnify God’s glory, putting God first; or, shall we use it for our own glory like the dishonest steward, putting us first, (for a while)?”

I’ve said before that poverty is a spiritual condition, not an economic one. This parable is about poverty. It is not about the size of our material wealth, it is about our spiritual condition. The sin that separate us from God if we are economically impoverished is envy of the wealth of others. It blinds us to the value of our own talents to do God’s work. The sin that separates us from God if we are wealthy is loving it more than God. That love blinds us to God.

Jesus is not glorifying dishonesty, he is telling us to be a worried man and use our clever minds as well as the dishonest do, so our possessions work towards the glory of God. Use the cleverness of our minds to make us a beacon of faith in Soddy Daisy, Chattanooga and where ever you go. Whether we have a little money or a lot, a little talent or a lot, are a big congregation or little one, it is a sin to use it unwisely. Use it with care and shrewdness so you keep your eye on the prize, then you do not lose your way home. And brothers, there is a home. AMEN. 

Day 280 - Changed Lives, reprise

This is a sermon given to the men from St. Matthew's Shelter who participate in The Urban Outreach Ministry of Second Presbyterian Church, Chattanooga. Sept. 16, 2013. It is a reprise of Day 279.

OT reading: Exodus 32:1-14
NT reading: Luke 15:1-10

The Lord changed his mind about the people of Israel out there in the desert, didn’t he? Don’t ever forget, we are just like them. The people of Israel were impatient and they wanted to rely on their own strength. Moses had been on the mountain top way to long, and they were ready to get on with it, for all they know Moses was gone for good. So Aaron his second in command, of all people, told them to give him their gold jewelry and he made them an idol to worship. He said this is the god that brought you out of Egypt. Can you imagine?

The Israelites were ready to celebrate. They arose the next day, made a great meal and ate it in front of this idol and carried on with their women in a drunken stupor praising a metal god.

How soon they forgot the plagues the Lord brought on Pharaoh; how soon they forgot the parting of the Sea; how soon they forgot the pillar of the Lord’s cloud that led the way, how soon they forgot the manna from heaven. You can see why God was an angry God. He was ready, in spite of his promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to make them a great nation, to be their God, to be done with them, to let his wrath burn them away like a fire does dry grass.

But Moses pleaded and argued with the Lord, reminding of his promise and the Lord changed his mind. Do you hear that? He changed his mind. We have all been told God does not change his mind; his word is The Law. But here it is in Exodus: The Lord changed his mind. The Hebrew reads, The Lord repented, had compassion, felt sorry for. Thanks be to God that he did, because otherwise we would be poor wayfaring strangers, no Jesus for us.

So here we come to these two parables Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees. They are short, only three or four verses each and they sound very similar, but what doe they have to do with the Israelites partying in the desert insulting and inviting God to use his wrath against them?

I told you last week that in Luke we are following the man Jesus as he made his way from Galilee to Jerusalem where he was going to enter as a king, be arrested and crucified at the time of the Jewish Passover that honors the Lord freeing Israel from Egypt. As Jesus walks across this dusty desert land, crowds of castaways, sick and sinners, and scheming scribes and Pharisees beset him. They beg for healing, the look for ways to trap him. Last week we heard him say we need the single-minded commitment to our faith that we let nothing draw our loyalty from it. We need a single-minded commitment that is the same as you have when you hate something. You must hate anything that gets in the way off following him. “Don’t get me wrong,” he says, “It isn’t going to be easy, you gotta carry your cross just like me.”

 And Jesus is always ready for a meal. Unfortunately he seems always to offend someone at a meal. He ate at a big dinner with the scribes and Pharisees, the movers and shakers in the Jewish community. They all fought for the best spot but Jesus rebuked them saying always to sit at the foot of the table, and even better when you throw a banquet, always invite the outcast and sinners, the worst part of society, not your friends and family.

Who were the outcasts in that time? Some were the most despised of society, the tax collectors (they were usually fellow Jews working for the Romans and they cheated and abused the public for their own pocketbooks and were worse than sinners). Then there were the people who worked disagreeable jobs like tanners and shepherds who stink of their work and handled unclean items such as blood and carcasses. There were the people who were judged unclean because of disease and deformity. There were the sinners who indulged in immoral behavior and deceit, and finally there were those people who failed to live according to the Law.

But Jesus never differentiated among them. He willingly consorted with outcasts just as he did the wealthy, and often ignore food and other ritual laws. And that got in the craw of these scribes and Pharisees. They had just eaten with Jesus at that big feast and now find him eating with the very people they despise. They say, “This fellow has the gall to do this.” It is outrageous behavior in their eyes. Not only is his behavior sacrilegious to them on face value, it insults and diminishes their reputation. They have eaten with a person who consorts with the unclean. In their eyes, there is nothing good about his behavior.

That is when Jesus told them these two parables.

These scribes and Pharisees raise a good question for us. When we look at people what kind of sinners do we see? Is it the televangelist we read about who swindled his congregation? Is it the person who is mowing their lawn at 11:30AM Sunday morning rather than attending church? Is it the same-sex couple walking down the street hand in hand? Is it the alcoholic stumbling down the sidewalk at the city park? Is it the person who abuses their spouse or children? I ask myself sometimes, how often do I recognize the sinner in me? What kind of sin would you publically name about yourself? What offense demands repentance?

Jesus says in this parable that the Lord celebrates when someone repents. “Repent” has an important meaning in these two parables.

The problem we have is the Bible was written in languages we don’t use, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. In the New Testament there are several words we translate as “repent” in English. To repent can mean to see the error of our way and feel sorry or contrite for our actions and desire forgiveness. That certainly is a major part of repentance, but the particular word in our parables is metanoia; it has a deeper and more important meaning. It means that something has happened in our mind that causes a complete 180⁰ reversal in our behavior. We have seen the light and have a changed our life, outlook and our mind, just like God did when the Israelites insulted God with the golden calf at Mt. Sinai. This is the repentance of these parables.

Now I ask you, how does such repentance fit into this story about the shepherd and the lost sheep? Jesus says when the shepherd came home, “(6)he called together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” He must be talking about the shepherd’s gain not the sheep’s gain.  The sheep didn’t do anything but get lost.

Is Jesus saying the shepherd is elated because he has brought the sheep home?  Is Jesus saying this one sheep is more important than the other 99 who were safely gathered into the flock?

It is a puzzling why Jesus continues, “(7)Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” Did the lost sheep repent with an about face in behavior, or is something else going on?

Let’s keep that question in mind. Jesus is not done. If you don’t understand one he gives you another one.

The second parable is about a widow with 10 drachmas. Most people think one drachma probably represented at least a day’s wages. So the widow has a significant amount of money here, ten day’s wages. It could be her savings for the Passover trip to Jerusalem coming up in a few weeks where Jesus is heading.

It seems this widow is a little better off than some Jesus talks about. In other scripture we hear Jesus referring to a widow who has a single copper coin that she gives to the collection. The emphasis is she is clearly a very poor person who has given all she has in honor to God.

For some reason, he makes this widow a little different. But we are faced with the same quandary in each parable because Jesus says in verse 10 makes it unarguably clear where God stands with our repentance, “(10)Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Even God rejoices over someone who realizes their error and repents by changing their way of living. The joy in heaven is the same.

What do coins and sheep have to do with repentance?  Is Jesus saying that if the shepherd is so overjoyed at the value of the one sheep of the 100 he found, and the widow the 1 coin of the 10, think how much greater God’s joy is when someone changes their mind and gets right with God, repents? God’s joy is greater than the joy of the shepherd and the joy of the widow because one of us is infinitely more valuable to God?

I think we are onto something but the mystery remains, who is repenting in these parables? The answer could lay elsewhere. Matthew 9:35-40 and Mark 6:30-34, say when Jesus looked upon the crowds of outcasts he had compassion, as they seemed to be a flock without a shepherd.

Another clue in our two parables is that Jesus is talking to the scribes and Pharisees. Could he be giving them a lesson about how they have lost their focus? This is really the way it often turns.  We lose sight of the underlying meaning of the parable (just like the words of our hymns) looking for how it applies someone else.

We sang the hymn, Amazing Grace, with this idea in mind. Two of its verses say, “Amazing Grace saved a wretch like me. Amazing Grace…how sweet the sound! I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

My worry is how easy it is to hear a message so often that we become deaf to it and do not live by it. Words like  “How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed!” and “Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home” speak from the heart of the writer, a man named John Newton. This is about the joy in heaven we are discussing.

You may know the story of John Newton, he was the subject of recent TV program and a movie about his influence on William Wilberforce who started the British anti- slavery movement.

John Newton was a rebellious young boy, entered the British Navy early, was courtmartialed, convicted, flogged and eventually discharged to service on a slave trader ship. Probably the Naval authorities thought this would be suitable punishment because the job was so horrendously cruel.

He sailed with his ship from Africa to the US and elsewhere slave trade flourished. I can’t paint an accurate picture of what it must have been like for the Africans. The conditions were abhorrent, inhumane and unimaginable with many dying before landfall. Newton’s captain was up top at the helm, proud, respected and fully insensitive to the fact his cargo was human beings, because to him, that is what it was, cargo. He was just like the scribes and Pharisees looking over the bad crown Jesus shared a meal. Newton behaved so badly they gave him to a slave trader who abused and mistreated him, but even so, his life was still overwhelmingly better than the slaves’. In a severe storm at sea, he underwent a conversion experience eventually quit the slave trade in disgust and became an Anglican minister. When he described himself as “a wretch like me,” he was serious. It wasn’t poetic exaggeration; he understood the gravity of his deeds on the slave ships and the power of repentance that empowers a changed life.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus constantly drives home the point about ministering to the parts of society most people call the outcasts and sinners. I think he focuses on the people who suffered because it is so easy to see the despair of the hopeless and so easy for us to help them. It only takes personal action. There is one often distorted passage, John 12:1-8 and Mark 14:3-8. It captures the message about how easy it is to help. A woman washed Jesus’ feet with expensive nard and Judas, the traitor, chided Jesus for allowing it, saying it was wasteful to use money for the perfume on his feet when it could be used for the poor. Jesus said, in my words, “You can help the poor anytime you wish but you won’t so they will be with you always. You only have me for a little while.”

The message of our two parables is not about just the sheep we help as a good shepherd or the coins and the widow. It is not just about the joy of God over a changed life of the person who had stopped coming to worship and has returned, or the errant sinner who tastes God’s grace and turns around.

The parable is a question to us all, who of us shall be the shepherd? Who of us shall offer the Good News to a destitute dreg of society bringing the taste of living water that will bring grace? This parable is about the scribes and Pharisees who criticized of Jesus and ignored those lost wretched souls who like John Newton long for rescue by saving grace.

What joy there will be in heaven when one scribe or one Pharisee repents and adopts a new way of living. What joy when one scribe or Pharisee ceases to ignore and embraces the worst of society because they have the revelation that they are as impoverished spiritually as the outcasts are economically. Repentance, a full reversal of behavior, a changed mind, is the only hope of escaping this wretched state of sin. We may get to heaven f or having compassion for the people society rejects, but it is different from taking action to bring them the Good News. That, I imagine, is the joy in heaven, when God sees one of his children loving someone who knows no love.

If we are serious about repentance we have to know Jesus is calling us all scribes and Pharisees, not of the poor and outcast. We may be one of the 99 who are blessed by God’s grace. We may end up a child at play at his feet, only God knows for certain. This parable says we have not fully repented with a changed mind until we do understand that we are the poor wretches tied to this world of material wealth and give our attention to God’s least children. We have to live and love so God can use us for our neighbor, any time and anywhere. Let us pray that our compassion brings the lost sheep home so we are part of that great heavenly celebration of joy. 

Day 279 - Changed Lives

A sermon given at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN Sept. 15, 2013

OT reading: Exodus 32:1-14
NT reading: Luke 15:1-10

These two parables are only three or four verses each and they sound very similar. Unfortunately, their message is so well worn we often give it short shrift.

A little background may help to get a good grasp on the meanings. But to appreciate them let me give you a little background. We know Jesus is on his way from Galilee to Jerusalem where he will meet the cross in the time of Passover. Large crowds of castaways, sick and sinners, and scheming scribes and Pharisees beset him. In one exchange he tells us we need the single minded commitment to our faith that we let nothing draw our loyalty from it. It is as if we must “hate” everything that tries to dissuade us from following Jesus. We know the use of the word hate emphasizes that single minded focus.

He always offended someone at a meal. He rebuked the Jewish religious leaders, the movers and shakers in the Jewish community at a feast, telling them always to sit at the foot of the table, and when they throw banquets, always invite the outcast and sinners, the worst part of society, not their friends and family.

In that time the most despised of society were the tax collectors (they were usually fellow Jews working for the Romans and they cheated and abused the public for their own pocketbooks and were worse than sinners). Then there were the people who worked disagreeable jobs like tanners and shepherds who stink of their work and handle unclean items such as blood and carcasses. There were the people who were judged unclean because of disease and deformity. There were the sinners who indulged in immoral behavior and deceit, and finally there were those people who failed to live according to the Law. Jesus never differentiated among them. He willingly consorted with outcasts just as he did the wealthy, and often ignore food and other ritual laws.

These religious leaders who had just eaten with Jesus at the big feast find him eating with the very people they despise. It is outrageous behavior in their eyes. They say, “This fellow has the gall to do this.” Not only is his behavior abhorrent to them on face value, it insults and diminishes their reputation. They have associated with a person who consorts with the unclean. In their eyes, there is nothing good about his behavior.

It does raise a good question for us. When we look at people what kind of sinners do we see? Is it the televangelist we read about who swindled his congregation? Is it the person who is mowing their lawn at 11:30AM Sunday morning rather than attending church? Is it the same-sex couple walking down the street hand in hand? Is it the alcoholic stumbling down the sidewalk at the city park? Is it the person who abuses their spouse or children? I ask myself sometimes, how often do I recognize the sinner in me? What kind of sin would you publically name about yourself? What offense demands repentance?

The word “repent” has an important meaning in these two parables. We translate several Greek words as “repent.” To repent can mean to see the error of our way and feel sorry or contrite for our actions and desire forgiveness. That certainly is a major part of repentance, but the particular word used here, metanoia, has a deeper and more important sense. It means that something has happened in our mind that causes a complete reversal in our behavior. In effect, we do a 180^o reversal of our behavior. We have seen the light and have a changed our life and outlook.  This is the repentance of these parables.

Now I ask you, how does such repentance fit into this story about the shepherd and the lost sheep? Jesus says when the shepherd came home, “(6)he called together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” He must be talking about the shepherd’s gain not the sheep’s gain.  The sheep didn’t do anything but get lost. The shepherd brought him back into the fold, probably carrying the sheep on his shoulders. (Imagine how the shepherd smells now!)

Is Jesus saying the shepherd is elated because he has brought the sheep home?  Is Jesus saying this one sheep is more important than the other 99 who were safely gathered into the flock?

It is a puzzling whether or not this is a story about the sheep or the shepherd because Jesus continues, “(7) Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” Did the lost sheep repent with an about face in behavior, or is something else going on?

Let’s keep that question in mind. Jesus is not done with parables.

The second parable is about a widow with 10 drachmas. The drachma is a silver coin that has some appreciable value. Most people think one drachma probably represented at least a day’s wages. So the widow has a significant amount of money here, ten day’s wages. It could be her savings for the Passover trip to Jerusalem coming up in a few weeks where Jesus is heading.

It seems this widow is a little better off than some Jesus talks about. In other scripture we hear Jesus referring to a widow who has a single copper coin that she gives to the collection. The emphasis is she is clearly a very poor person who has given all she has in honor to God.  In our parable it is a little more ambiguous. The widow may not be overly wealthy but is she might be a miser. Or, perhaps she is a really poor widow who exercises great stewardship with her money.

We cannot tell by the parable. We are faced with the same quandary in either case. If she is a miser, she is going to be really happy to find the coin. If she is really poor she is going to be especially happy to find the coin.

Verse 10 makes it unarguably clear where God stands with our repentance, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Even God rejoices over someone who realizes their error and repents by changing their way of living. The joy in heaven is the same. But what does the joy of finding a lost coin or sheep have to do with repentance? God’s joy transcends the joy of the shepherd and the joy of the widow. Perhaps it is because God treasures the value of His children so immensely?

The mystery remains, who is repenting? The answer could lay elsewhere. Matthew 9:35-40  and Mark 6:30-34, say when Jesus looked upon the crowds of outcasts he had compassion as they seem to be a flock without a shepherd. Another clue in our two parables is that Jesus is talking to the scribes and Pharisees. Could he be giving them a lesson about how they have lost their focus? This is really the way it often turns.  We lose sight of the underlying meaning of the parable (just like the words of our hymns) looking for how it applies someone else.

I selected the hymn, Amazing Grace, with this idea in mind. Two of its verses say, “Amazing Grace saved a wretch like me. Amazing Grace…how sweet the sound! I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

My worry is how easy it is to hear a message so often that we become deaf to it and do not live by it. Words like  “How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed!” and “Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home” speak from the heart of the writer. This is about the joy in heaven we are discussing.

You may know the story of John Newton, the author of the hymn because it has been the subject of recent TV programs and a movie about his influence on William Wilberforce who was a renown British opponent of slavery.

John Newton grew up a rebellious boy, entered the British Navy early, was court-martialed, convicted, flogged and eventually discharged to service on a slave trader ship. Probably the Naval authorities thought this would be suitable punishment because the job was so horrendously cruel.

He sailed with his ship from Africa to the US and elsewhere slave trade flourished loaded with slaves in dark, smelly holds. I can’t paint an accurate picture of what it must have been like. The conditions in the hold were abhorrent, inhumane and unimaginable with many dying before landfall. Newton’s captain was up top at the helm, proud, respected and fully insensitive to the fact his cargo were human beings, because it was just that to him, cargo, just like the scribes and Pharisees. Newton behaved so badly on this slave ship they gave him to a slave trader who abused and mistreated him, but even so, his life was still overwhelmingly better than the slaves’. Later in a severe storm at sea, he underwent a conversion experience. He came to be captain of a slave ship but eventually quit in disgust and became an Anglican minister. When he described himself as “a wretch like me,” he was serious. It wasn’t hyperbole or poetic exaggeration; he understood the gravity of his deeds on the slave ships and the power of repentance that empowers a changed life.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus constantly drives home the point about ministering to the dregs of society, the outcasts and sinners. I think he focuses on the outcasts and sinners because it is so easy to see the despair of the hopeless and so easy for us to help them. It only takes personal action. There is one often distorted passage, John 12:1-8 and Mark 14:3-8. It captures the message about how easy it is to help. A woman washed Jesus’ feet with expensive nard and Judas, the traitor, chided Jesus for allowing it, saying it was wasteful to use money for the perfume on his feet when it could be used for the poor. Jesus said, in my words, “You can help the poor anytime you wish but you won’t so they will be with you always. You only have me for a little while.”

The message of our two parables then cannot be about just the sheep we help as a good shepherd or the coins and the widow. It cannot be just about the joy of God over a changed life of the person who had stopped coming to worship and has returned, or the errant sinner who tastes God’s grace and turns around.

The parable is a question to us all, who of us shall be the shepherd? Who of us shall offer the Good News to a destitute dreg of society bringing the taste of living water that will bring grace?

This parable is about the scribes and Pharisees who criticized of Jesus and ignored those lost wretched souls who like John Newton long for rescue by saving grace.

What joy there will be in heaven when one scribe or one Pharisee repents and adopts a new way of living. What joy when one scribe or Pharisee ceases to ignore and embraces the worst of society because they have the revelation that they are as impoverished spiritually as the outcasts are economically. Repentance, a full reversal, is the only hope of escaping this wretched state of sin. Feeling sorry for the poor and the outcast may get you to heaven, but it is different from taking action to bring them the Good News. That, I imagine, is the joy in heaven, when God sees one of his children loving someone who knows no love.

If we are serious about repentance we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the scribe and Pharisee, not of the poor and outcast. We may be one of the 99 who are blessed by God’s grace. We may end up a child at play at his feet, only God knows for certain. This parable says we have not fully repented until we understand that we are one of the poor wretches tied to this world of material wealth and give our attention to God’s least children with changed lives. Our faith must mirror our love for God with our whole being and the same love for our neighbor. Let us pray that our compassion brings the lost sheep home so we are part of that great heavenly celebration of joy.